While reading deep into a Wikipedia article on railroad Maintenance of Way workers commonly referred to as Gandy Dancers, I stumbled on a new to me derogatory term for Italians. ?SNIPES. ?Anyone else heard this one? ?I'm pasting the paragraph below. ?I will follow up with more research. ?Bigotry seems universal, persistent and continuing, in other words, human.
A story published in the August 1931 edition of?, a monthly magazine published by the??for boys 6 to
18, mentions the term "gandy". In the story, "Eddie Parker", about 17 or 18 years old and characterized as the all-American type, takes on a job as a worker in a railway section crew. His new co-workers are all Italian immigrants, or, as referred to in the story, "snipes". The "snipes" are characterized as lazy, stupid, and lovers of garlic, olive oil, and Italian music - certainly very prejudicial by today's standards, but an illuminating look into America's past. As the story goes, Eddie figures a way to get the "lazy" Italians to work at pumping the??(used to get to and from the section the crew would be working on that day) by using their love of music. He explains that he "hooked a??onto the under frame and attached the handle to the axle crank..,[and] whenever the axel turns the handle has to follow it". Interestingly, in this story the workers are referred to as section crew workers, but the hand-car is referred to as a "gandy".
Steve Ruggieri
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